Adjusting the neck on stringed instruments such as guitars and banjos for example, and maintaining proper neck alignment, has been a challenge for years because a significant amount of force is continuously applied to the neck by a plurality of strings in tension. The spacing between the fingerboard and the strings must be consistent along the length of the neck. Such positioning is even more critical where frets are inlaid in the fingerboard to enable pitch selection of any selected string by depressing one or more fingers on a distal side of the fret from the resonating chamber or pickup part associated with the body of the stringed instrument.
Proper alignment of the fingerboard of a guitar with respect to the suspended strings is essential. Although spacing and height displacement of strings from the fingerboard can be partially adjusted by the use of a specifically configured bridge or nut, it is preferred that the fingerboard of a guitar be straight and generally flat (meaning nontwisted) so that initial adjustments of the fingerboard position with respect to the rest of the instrument can be made in a predictable and controlled manner, remaining uniform for all frets along the fingerboard length.
In conventional fabrication of guitars, the neck member is often initially bowed or even twisted, if only slightly. Many of these faulty necks must be discarded. For some, adjustments can be made to properly position the fingerboard with respect to the strings. However, correction of subsequent rotational and/or lateral misalignments are very difficult where the fingerboard is not initially flat, and compensation is virtually impossible when attempted from the outset for an extreme bow or twisted neck structure.
Even where the neck structure remains acceptable after initial tooling, when applied to the guitar and subjected to stringed forces of 175 to 200 pounds of compression, misalignment of the neck structure may result. Because of the unpredictable response of wood composition, guitar neck components cannot easily be prestressed to allow compensation for adjustments resulting from the described string pressure or loading which are imposed upon the neck.
Furthermore, the prior problems of stress-imposed changes within the neck structure continue to be troublesome because forces arising from strings in tension can also affect distortion in the neck structure, particularly where weather conditions, heat and humidity might affect the wood. Therefore, a common impediment to construction and maintenance of a flat fingerboard and predictably straight neck body is the loading of the neck structure with the forces imposed by the tightly strung strings. Such stress is applied to the neck in conventional manner.
While adjustments, proper neck position and form are important to producing quality guitar necks. It is also important to provide a guitar neck that is aesthetically pleasing to the buyer. Therefore, methods are needed to provide a way to efficiently mass produce the guitar necks, while maintaining the guitar neck quality and appearance. Typically, a guitar neck member is produced in several steps and with distinct parts. Specifically, the neck body is cut and shaped separately from a peg head. Once the two pieces (neck body and peck head) have been cut and shaped they are then combined and further shaped in a less efficient process to provide proper alignment giving the neck member the appearance of one continuous piece.
Although the collective approaches in the prior art have improved somewhat the state of the art in the field of stringed instruments, they are nonetheless fraught with disadvantages. Complete modularity of the neck member has still not been achieved, and adjustment mechanisms on the instrument body causes interior deformation in the instrument body, and the relative position of said adjustment mechanism and the body is often a source of unwanted vibration in the sound output of the instrument.
Therefore, a neck member that is capable of being adjusted and reduces unwanted vibrations while is easily fabricated in a time and cost efficient process and still aesthetically pleasing continues to be sought.